Directed by David Mackenzie
I don't know how much the director David Mackenzie likes to impress his listeners in a conversation. It's clearer, though, how much he likes to impress his audience, in showing them how skilful he can be, at any risk. The beginning of his Spread is obviously histrionic: Ashton Kutcher's cool monologue, added to serious rock'n'roll riffs (the wonderful Duke Spirit tune, 'This Ship Was Made To Last') is continued by a very complex shot of a man and a woman walking into a club. It's eloquently enough that this isn't a story that would slowly unfold, and either is the director going to spare any tricks in order to develop it - you are simultaneously aware of the whole party and of the hidden relationships between some of the characters, as Nikki, played by Kutcher, translates to the viewers some of his cynical thoughts. Even f the film gradually loses its rhythm and the viewer its omniscience, Mackenzie doesn't forget one moment about the initial stakes: no morals, no hidden meanings and no sentimental side. At least, not until the last quarter.
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In the part of the immoral playboy, with a line ready for every female he comes across, Kutcher is as ambitious as Mackenzie is. Spread feels naturally as the movie meant to launch him as a (more) serious and (more) mature actor; the fact that he also produces it gives him the questionable right to appear credited separated from all the crew, as the natural star of the film, leaving aside a much more interesting Anne Heche. Nevertheless, it takes an awful lot of time before his image of actor for light films would totally vanish, even if the nowadays Kutcher seems a grownup and fakes his voice lesser times. Still, the good news is that the part of a seducer looking for the next pray suits him, at least until it involves a sensible side, a side that Kutcher faked for a long time now in other films.
The fact that the same cynical playboy gives up some of his principles and seems to be falling in loves shouldn't come as a surprise for anybody. That precisely is the reason because the film becomes dull and common after a while. But, while you're waiting for it to end, thinking of what you'll do after leaving the theater, the last part arrives, not without an unpredictable twist that should cause a little surprise amongst viewers. Sure, after more than an hour of dialogues that don't seem too 'real' or 'true', it's easy to see that we are experiencing mostly the world according to Nikki, a world that only a naïve could mistake for the true one. What looks 'real' and 'true', though, is the choice that Heather, Nikki's lover, does as the film comes to an end, mostly a mysterious, cruel gesture, unusual for American comedies. In a way, Spread has the ending of Slumdog Millionaire, if Danny Boyle wouldn't have wanted to direct a fairytale, the more plausible alternative in an everlasting present dilemma between love and constraints. For a couple of moments, Spread feels totally fresh, even if that doesn't radically make it a film above the average. From those few minutes, the audience will sure regain his balance, lost after watching a lot of recent forced happy endings. The great, volatile quality of Mackenzie's film it that it provokes a certain kind of mysterious catharsis; if you come to think about it, it's exactly the fact that the events had to take that tragic turn that the catharsis implies, a fact that a more commercial film would ignore; maybe it's also the privileged moment in which one can really identify with the main character and feel a little empathy. Of course, it's a matter of personal choice if this final twist of the story it's just showing off or a real search for a more accurate ending of a love story. While the script ruins it all with a few corny final lines and the soundtrack covers it greatly one more time, it's still hard to decide if Spread was a comedy with a touch of genius or just a plain, common farce.
